Once you have identified the focus of your question, you need to try breaking down your question into its key concepts. Concepts describe the main idea or ideas in an assignment. A concept may be expressed by a single word or several closely related words. Consider the following example:

Cheating in exams at universities

Three main concepts can be identified here:

• Cheating
• Exams
• University

Once you've worked out the main concepts of your topic, you need to look for alternative terms or keywords that describe each concept to use as search terms. If you limit yourself to just these three keywords, you may miss lots of useful information.